


The Invisible Hand of the Fan Market: What is "fandom is a gift economy" really saying?

by Anonymous



Category: Meta - Fandom
Genre: Academic Essays, Fan Labor, Fan Studies, Gen, Gift Economies, I did research again, MLA format because TCW's not my mom, Macroeconomics, Meta, Period-Typical Sexism, Social Sciences everywhere, There's a bibliography, acafandom, parasocial relationships, the human emotion of 'that's not how this works. that's not how any of this works'
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-01-31
Updated: 2020-01-31
Packaged: 2021-03-17 19:47:58
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 548
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29105835
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/
Summary: Prompt:Communism. (It's a joke about value-laden mis/interpretations of economic systems by people who want a buzzword on their way to making a different point altogether - oops, look at that, spoiled the essay a bit.)
Kudos: 1
Collections: Anonymous, Banned Together Bingo 2020





	The Invisible Hand of the Fan Market: What is "fandom is a gift economy" really saying?

**Author's Note:**

> Prompt: `Communism`. (It's a joke about value-laden mis/interpretations of economic systems by people who want a buzzword on their way to making a different point altogether - oops, look at that, spoiled the essay a bit.)

> _Every article we have written, every interview we have given, every industry event we have attended, and every act of fan advocacy we have engaged in has, for better or for worse, helped bring about this public face of fandom._ (Busse 115)

We are at this point in our third decade of the statement "fandom is a gift economy"; it has long since gone mainstream. First, in an academic context, in order to explain why people were putting so much effort in and why it should be considered legitimate; later, as a trickle-down form of self-identification and a justification requiring no further expansion. In the process, many things are obscured, and not accidentally. Over time, there has been progressive attrition in the understanding of who is receiving - and, more recently, giving - these gifts at all, drifting increasingly far from the context of a gift _economy_ as in a system that involves identity and value in some form, seemingly as an expression of the semiconscious belief that the very concept of economy is intrinsically always already capitalist.

When Jones approvingly discusses "fans participating in a gift economy . . . policing the boundaries of fandom and its subjects" (3.9) as a service both to _Twilight_ fandom itself (presented as welcoming) and E.L. James in particular (framed as ungrateful), this 'policing' being a good thing depends recursively on who's doing it - specifically, it is determined first and foremost by gender, then normativity within the community. Furthermore, far from the Wild West landscape of idfic and exploration that people engaging _in_ such behavior elsewhere will often fall back on the explanation that they're defending, among the labor James is presented as having exploited and stolen includes being told what plot points, content, or kinks would be unacceptable to her all-important audience. (I find myself irrepressibly reminded of when _else_ we've seen women heavily focused on avowing that their policing a specific space for interlopers, nonconformists, and undesirables is both a duty of and a service to women generally; it does not take long going back in fan discourses to get a sense of how exactly all the TERF ideas we're struggling with "out of nowhere" today came in, it only takes the willingness to reject this selfsame self-reinforcing reasoning. Which is significantly harder for a self-policing community that identifies as homogenous than mere research would ever be.) Where I've generally seen this sort of behavior discussed as an unfortunate, necessary evil, framing it as a productive, loving gift that's unprompted by anything more than the potential for an author to veer away from the audience's intent takes the mask off - and points to the extent to which the identity being reinforced by the 'gift' being given is less any individual person's (Hellekson notwithstanding), and in fact stands _against_ personal identity, consisting of enforcing an otherwise-unspoken collective one. 

The meaning of "fandom is a gift economy" has drifted further and further out of relevance as a statement as opposed to a distinct shibboleth as the definition of _who_ gives and receives gifts changes beneath it. With that definition shifting in a bottom-up manner, the corresponding formal justification by definition runs behind, at the rate of discourse shifting and then being emulated in academic contexts - and that only at the speed of peer review. 

**Author's Note:**

> **Bibliography**
> 
> Busse, Kristina. "Fan Labor and Feminism: Capitalizing on the Fannish Labor of Love." *Cinema Journal*, Vol. 54, No. 3, 2015, pp. 110-115., www.jstor.org/stable/43653438. Accessed 31 Jan. 2021.
> 
> Jones, Bethan. "Fifty Shades of Exploitation."
> 
> Schaffner, Becca. The Horn Book Magazine. Nov/Dec 2009. "In Defense of Fanfiction".
> 
> Turk, Tisha. "Fan work: Labor, worth, and participation in fandom's gift economy."


End file.
